


Like Sleep to the Freezing

by nerdylittledude



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bucky Isn't a Good Guy, Depression, Domestic Violence, M/M, PTSD, Steve makes shitty choices, poorly managed PTSD, potentially triggering content related to:, terrible coping strategies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-10 15:28:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4397234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdylittledude/pseuds/nerdylittledude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study of how adequately two people can ruin each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Take Me to Church

**Author's Note:**

> I love reading optimistic recovery fics, and I love reading fluff, and I love picturing Steve and Bucky happy together. This series will not be about any of those things. The reality of it is that loving a fucked up person can fuck you up, and trying to save someone isn't healthy. The reality is also that love and guilt make people do awful things.
> 
> Will probably write a chapter for each song in the self-titled album by Hozier. I can't promise a happy ending, but I won't promise a terrible one either. I have no plans except to let them self-destruct and see what happens.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies;_   
>  _I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife._
> 
> \--  
> "Hell below couldn’t have absolved him of these sins, but maybe Bucky can."

It’s crazy, fucked up love and Steve’s drunk on it.

He sees his Bucky back from the dead and it sinks in like a dead weight, like a sickness, that godawful _love_ that floods his body in a poison frenzy. There are lives to save, people to protect, and Steve’s gonna do that too, but he knows as soon as he sees those lifeless eyes, knows as soon as he hears _“Who the hell is Bucky?”_ that this story ends with them both at the bottom of a river.

Steve doesn’t care. God, he doesn’t care. He’s not alone in this twisted new world anymore. The one person who gets him more than anything is a murder ghost and a vacant shell, and Steve’s genuinely happy for the first time in almost a century. They fight and something hysterical bubbles under his skin, an urge to laugh in choking fits of giggles. Bucky’s back! And he doesn’t remember anything! Of course he doesn’t! _Of course he doesn’t!_ Bucky is a brainwashed assassin and isn’t that just Steve’s luck. It’s funny – it’s genuinely funny. Steve couldn’t imagine anything that could make him hate himself more than letting Bucky fall, but here it is. The cherry on top, the twist of the knife in the festering wound. Bucky’s been living a nightmare for decades upon decades, and it’s Steve’s fault.

That hysterical urge to laugh comes back later, when Sam warns him that Bucky might not be the kind you save. Steve wants to ask, _who cares? Honestly, who cares?_ Steve is kamikaze in love, love like a plane nosediving into the Arctic. The blood in his veins is love and guilt alone; each beat of his heart pulses it all through his body. If Bucky killed him, nothing would be more fitting.

_“I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well.”_

Steve’s ready.

He’s not expecting Bucky to save him. It throws his plans, but not for long. He’ll find him. Bucky can decide his fate. He’ll hunt him to the ends of the world and throw himself at the killer’s feet. Bucky alone is judge and jury to Steve’s sins. Steve is caught on the chase like a mad dog on a ghost scent, chasing leads that aren’t there, twisting and turning through sleepless nights.

When they meet again, of course, it’s because Bucky finds him. Steve stirs in his bed at the sensation of eyes on him. He turns on his bedside lamp and is proven right – Bucky is there, standing staring, eyes cold and calculating. Steve smiles.

“I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“I know who you are,” Bucky says, quiet, voice sounding rough and unpracticed. He takes a terrifying step forward. “I remember. I remember everything.”

Steve’s heart hammers in his chest.

“Buck,” he whispers, awestruck and awful, hand twitching with the urge to touch. “I’m sorry. I should have looked for you.”

Bucky is silent for a long moment, staring, expression blank. Finally, he nods. “Yes. You should have.”

There’s a lump in Steve’s throat and his whole body is tense, and he prays to God that Bucky kills him to rid him off the horror of knowing Bucky blames him, too. As he should.

“I remember loving you,” Bucky tells him, still expressionless, voice still devoid of feeling. “And you loved me.”

He says the words like mission intel, not like a confession. Steve nods once, giving the affirmative, hardly daring to breathe. At this, Bucky’s eyebrows arch up just slightly, as though he’s surprised at the confirmation. He walks forward until he’s looming at Steve’s bedside, and Steve has to look up at him.

“I am not him anymore. I assume you know that.”

Steve’s expression darkens, and he shakes his head slightly, still stubborn, still hoping.

“They made you do those things. You’re still you, Buck – ”

Bucky glares and grabs Steve’s face by the chin, forcing Steve to look into his metal-cold eyes. Steve searches them desperately for a hint of something familiar, but finds nothing.

“If this is going to work, you need to understand that. I’m not him. The Bucky you knew is dead. I assume you’ve already grieved him. No need to do it again.”

Steve is silent a long moment, trying to compose himself, trying to keep his voice from breaking when he next speaks.

He says, “If what is going to work?”

Bucky lets go of his face and sits back, straightening his shoulders, as he appraises Steve with what might be described as curiosity. Some of the harshness has melted from his expression.

“I have no missions left. No kills left. You did this.”

Steve nods. “I did this.”

“I am no one’s asset. I am a man. I… I have free will. That is what I have come to understand. I can give myself missions.”

Steve nods again.

“I remember loving you,” Bucky repeats, nodding softly to himself. “I want it again.”

Steve barely registers a wetness on his cheek as he nods frantically. “I want that too, Buck, I want it too.”

Bucky smiles then, but the smile is all wrong, it’s sad and sick and it makes Steve shiver.

“No, you don’t. You want to love him. Bucky Barnes. But I’m not him. I am a murderer. I’ve killed children in their beds. I remember every kill. I remember being used. None of it bothers me.”

Steve is finally out of the bed, swinging his legs out to stand and face Bucky, to look him in the eyes. He needs him to understand.

“I don’t care,” Steve says. “Whatever you want from me, it’s yours. You want to kill me? Kill me. You want to torture me? Here I am. I won’t fight you. You want… you want what we had before? I don’t care if you’re a stranger now. A killer. Whoever, whatever you are, it’s yours. I owe you that much. I owe you so much more than that…”

Oh, it’s crazy, fucked up love and Steve’s drunk on it. Hell below couldn’t have absolved him of these sins, but maybe Bucky can. Bucky scans his face like he’s reading a mission debrief, eyes focused. At last, he seems to make a decision.

“Kiss me,” Bucky says, and Steve doesn’t hesitate. He’s been fighting the impulse to kiss Bucky since the moment his mask fell off. It’s so easy, so natural, that for a moment it’s 1938, the war’s not yet begun, and they’re alone in their shitty apartment in Brooklyn. Bucky’s mouth feels like it always has, and Steve knows that he is ruined. “Indomitable Will” is listed as one of his superpowers on his trading card. Did the writers have any idea that one kiss from his famous sidekick could ruin him?

The thought stops him up short, and he pauses just a moment.

“I won’t hurt innocent people,” he tells Bucky quietly, “And I won’t let you hurt innocent people.”

Bucky licks his lips lightly, like he’s working out how kisses measure up to his fucked up memories. It seems to sit well with him, because he meets Steve’s eyes when he answers, easy and sure.

“I won’t.”

It’s the first of many lies the Winter Soldier tells Steve Rogers.

 

 

 


	2. Angel of Small Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Leash-less confusion I wander the concrete._   
>  _Wonder if better now having survived?_   
>  _Jarring of judgement and reasons defeat;_   
>  _The sweet heat of [his] breath in my mouth, I'm alive._

Steve kisses like a mission debrief, like he’s trying to convey intel between crashing lips. Steve kisses like the Asset is a person. Steve has not been awake for all these decades. Steve has no idea.

The Asset lets Steve kiss and kiss him, minutes on minutes, because it feels good and familiar and not much else does in this whole, hollow world. The Asset kisses back, following some sense memory from a simpler time. Steve has a hand on the back of the Asset’s neck and the other at the small of his back, solid, reassuring. The Asset is glad Steve agreed to love him.

Free will has so far been a waking nightmare, far worse than the torturous machines and the things that used to happen when he failed. The Asset has killed seven people in the months since Steve dropped the helicarriers. All of them were arbitrary civilians. One was a barista who said “Please go to the end of the line, sir.” Another was a thin, small teenage boy with golden hair that the Asset spotted from a rooftop. Another, an old man who bumped into him on the sidewalk. And so on. Each met neat, calculated deaths and each kill was confusing. The Asset had worked out that HYDRA had fallen. The Asset knew no new mission was coming. Why kill? Why do anything? What was his purpose?

The Asset vomits into a trash can after he kills the teenager. He doesn’t know why.

The Asset isn’t sure what he is called anymore. He knows he cannot be an asset to a fallen organization. He knows that he is a person, and without other people to maintain his conditioning, he has free will. And he learns from the Smithsonian exhibit, from research, from newspaper articles and history books, that he was once called James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. He’s certainly not the Asset anymore. He knows too much to be a weapon.

 “Self” is a foreign, unsettling concept, but as his mind produces thoughts and sporadic bursts of feeling, he starts to understand that the ideas “I”, “me”, and “my” must pertain to someone, and so he settles for _James_. He feels very little connection to the James Buchanan Barnes who lived almost three quarters of a century ago. But James is as good a name as any.

He watches Steve for weeks. Watches as Steve hunts him out, watches him through binoculars as he tosses and turns at night. The first feeling James can identify and understand comes when he’s watching Steve. He feels _possessive_. He feels it hot in his throat, feels it sear his chest. He wants Steve to belong to him. He wants to possess him. This feeling is a sharp blade and it jabs and jabs and James has no idea how to make it go away. He thinks perhaps killing Steve would make it go away.

He thinks a lot about killing Steve.

As more memories return, James feels more and more unhinged. He sees flashes of Steve’s smiling face. Memories like lightning bolts, of Steve coughing in the middle of the night, Steve kissing him, Steve sketching in his art book as he looks out a windowpane. Other memories come, too – memories of a train, of falling, of the Swiss scientist sawing at his arm. James keeps waking from helldreams, screaming. James wonders if this is a kind of torture. He wishes his handlers would return him to the frozen sleep.

After weeks of this, new memories and new emotions coming seemingly each waking moment, James makes a decision. He doesn’t want to kill Steve. He cannot have Steve if he is dead. He remembers kissing Steve, fucking Steve, making him food and giving him haircuts. He remembers these things feeling good. He remembers several times when the person he once was almost lost Steve. Each of those memories is laced with an agonizing terror, of being left alone, of letting Steve down. James does not want to experience those things. He wants the kisses, the good feelings. He is tired of the mental anguish of becoming a person again, and his memories say that maybe Steve can fix it.

So he finds him. And they make their new arrangement. And Steve calls James “Bucky” and kisses James like it’s his religion to do so. And for a moment, James stops hurting in his head and chest. For a moment, James feels like a person. James kisses back eagerly, and a memory of finally drinking water after a scorched day of marching forward without drink bubbles to the surface of his mind.  

When their lips part, a tiny and unaccountable part of James wants to whine.

“God, it’s good to have you back,” Steve whispers against James’ lips.

The words feel inaccurate. James wants to correct him. He’s not the Bucky Steve wishes for. That Bucky is not waiting beneath the surface, to return when the correct amount of caregiving and kisses has been administered. He is someone new, something other. But – and this much he _knows,_ no haze, no question– Steve has always belonged to him, whether he has been himself or Bucky or the Asset or anything in between. Steve’s body and this body belong to each other, and so James doesn’t correct Steve when he says that he’s missed him.

“We have to leave DC,” James replies, quiet. “Too many enemy operatives. I don’t want to be reconditioned. I only want you.”

Steve looks at James like he’s hung the moon. “We can go to New York. Stark Tower is the safest – ”

The possessive thing in James’ chest burns hot and cruel and James hisses, _“No.”_

Steve frowns.

“You can trust Tony and my friends, Buck. They’ll help you.”

James shakes his head resolutely. Absolutely not. James has no intention of sharing Steve Rogers. He certainly has no intention of being thrown in prison by a bunch Steve’s costumed freak show. Understanding seems to spread through Steve’s features, and James’ wonders idly what his own expression had been conveying.

“Baby steps. I get it,” Steve offers. “We don’t need any distractions. Whatever you need.”

Good. Steve understands the parameters of this arrangement. James’ gaze flickers to Steve’s lips, something warm glows content in his chest, and he tells Steve what he needs.

“Kiss me again.”

Steve does as he's told.

 


	3. Jackie & Wilson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We tried the world, good God, it wasn't for us._

Steve doesn’t ask where the empty farmhouse comes from. He figures, they’re just borrowing. Something tugs at his conscience, tells him to ask, tells him to dig, tells him to wonder why there’s recent signs of life in the house and the smell of fresh dirt in the back yard. He pushes it down.

They’re just borrowing.

Steve’s too happy to care. He and Bucky have been driving for days in a (borrowed) beat up, decades-old Lexus, and every few minutes Steve’s been lookin over at Bucky to make sure he’s real, and each time he’s been there, breathing, silent and scary but unquestionably alive. At one point, Bucky reached for his hand and they held hands for four hours of the drive. Steve is practically giddy.

So Steve doesn’t mention the copper smell that hangs in the air, or the lead weight in his stomach. He didn’t protest when Bucky threw his phone in the Pontomac or searched him for bugs, either. He didn’t ask where they were going when Bucky tossed him the keys to the Lexus, and he didn’t ask where the Lexus came from. Why start asking questions now?

The sun’s just setting as Steve walks through the house, learning the layout of it. Bucky’s standing by the back door, hair in his face, looking strange in his civvies: dark jeans, black shirt, army surplus field jacket. He watches Steve, expression unreadable, as Steve peruses the house.

“Is – Rogers,” Bucky furrows his brow. “Is the safehouse adequate?” His tone is somehow terse and unsure all at once.

Steve tries hard to keep the sadness out of his smile. Bucky is a hollow shell of a person and it shows in all his movements, his words, his facial expressions. It threatens to overwhelm Steve with a sadness more gutting than anything before it. So he tries extra hard to look genuinely happy when he answers.

“This is great, Buck.”

Bucky nods once, curt, and stays standing ramrod straight, watching Steve. It’s clear if it were up to him, they’d stand silently and stare at each other until long after the sun went down. Steve huffs an empty chuckle and jerks a thumb toward the fridge.

“I’ll grab us some beers. We have a lot to catch up on.”

“Beer will have no effect on our enhanced metabolisms.”

Steve rolls his eyes.

“Don’t I know it, Buck. But the taste is familiar. Sometimes you gotta do things just for their comfort, y’know?”

Bucky narrows his eyes in confusion, like he doesn’t know at all, but Steve just grabs two beers from the fully stocked fridge – how it was stocked and by whom, Steve wonders but doesn’t ask – and leads the way to the backyard deck. Bucky follows wordlessly, and they sit on the rickety patio couch and look at each other.

Truth be told, Steve could look at Bucky for hours, wouldn’t mind it a bit. It’s a face well-worn in his memory, a face like a beer after a long day – a face like home. Bucky’s face has made countless appearances in Steve’s sketchbooks, in napkin drawings, in journals. Steve doesn’t deserve to be looking at this face again, but God help him, he’s more grateful than there are words for.

Still, he likes talkin’ to Buck even more than he likes lookin’ at him, and they have so, so much to catch up on. To his surprise, it’s Bucky who breaks the silence first.

“You read the file with SHIELD’s intel on the Winter Soldier Project, correct?” he asks, never breaking eye contact, and the intensity of his gaze makes everything he says feel like a threat. Steve shifts. Bucky needs lessons in talking to humans. Bucky needs lessons in everything.

 “I read it. Have you?”

Bucky nods. “It was included in the information the Black Widow released to the general public.”

“Then you know what I know about you. What they did to you.”

“Yes,” Bucky agrees. “You know how my handlers upheld my conditioning. You could use their techniques. I would be your weapon, if you wanted.”

Steve’s eyes go wide and he starts at Bucky’s words, thrown off course and completely bewildered. He shakes his head, touches Bucky’s shoulder before thinking twice of the earnest movement. He takes a deep breath, and Bucky looks almost… amused.

“Bucky, I would never, ever do that to you,” Steve says, urgent, insistent. “I’d sooner die than do what they did to you.”

Bucky shrugs – an incredibly humanizing gesture. It’s unsettling.

“I have read your file, too, Rogers. And I remember… things. I know you’re not interested in weapons. You value people, human relationships, peace. You fight for peace.” Bucky arches his eyebrows to convey how silly that idea sounds to him before continuing. “Given this intel, I do not expect you to activate my conditioning.”

There’s a beat of silence where that sinks in – Bucky _trusts_ him. It feels good, to hear him say it so plain, like it’s clear as day.

“Everything is hard to do,” Bucky confesses at last, quiet. “Choosing which words to say. Choosing whether to enter a room. Choosing to eat or drink. It’s… overwhelming.”

There’s a lump in Steve’s throat he’s trying hard to ignore. Bucky has been a prisoner of war for over seventy years. He hasn’t made a choice without fear, conditioning and orders in seventy years. Steve tries to think of what Sam would say. He wishes like hell Sam was here.

“Little by little, Buck, it’ll get easier. Just take it one day at a time.”

Bucky breathes a sigh, and a frown pulls at the edges of his mouth.

“Maybe you could,” Bucky counters. “Choose. For me.”

Steve furrows his brow. “Choose what?”

Bucky gestures vaguely at the world at large. “Everything. Choose for us both. Decide when we eat, when we sleep, what we wear. Give me mission objectives. I don’t want to think anymore. Please.”

God, it’s so hard to keep the anguish from his face. This is all wrong, and he doesn’t know how to explain it to Bucky. He doesn’t know how to say know when all Buck’s asking for is for things to be easier. Steve wonders, idly, if this trapped animal feeling in his chest is what an anxiety attack feels like.

He wants to say _“it’s important that you start making your own choices now.”_ He wants to say, _“if I did that, I’d be just like Hydra.”_ He wants to say, _“this isn’t healthy.”_

“I could try,” he hears himself say instead.

Some of the tension in Bucky’s shoulders seems to ebb away, and it’s worth the twisting uncertainty in Steve’s gut. Steve takes Bucky’s hand in his, and Bucky doesn’t pull it away.

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make your own… mission objectives, too,” Steve adds, hoping to remedy some of the fuck-uppedness of the situation. “You should ask for things you want. You should think about what’s important to you, and I can help you with it.”

Bucky’s fingers flex in Steve’s hand. Bucky stares at their joined hands, quiet.

“I have one mission,” Bucky offers thoughtfully. “I will keep us safe. Hydra will not take you. I will not be their weapon again.”

He says the words so resolutely that Steve actually grins. He raises his beer with his other hand in cheers.

“I’ll drink to that.”

Bucky looks from Steve’s face, to Steve’s bottle, to his own bottle, and then unsurely mimics the motion. They clink glasses and they drink. It’s a good, sweet moment. A new memory for Bucky to add to his collection. The thought warms Steve all over. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, sipping their beers, and Steve feels less lonely than he has in a long, long time. It reminds him of a days, decades ago, they spent sitting on the front stoop, side by side, lazily watching the busy Brooklyn streets.

Steve says, “Hey Buck. Want to rest your head in my lap? Wanna get the knots outta your hair.”

The look Bucky gives Steve is shockingly pained.

“Don’t ask,” he says. “Please. Tell me.”

Steve hates this, but he loves Bucky, so he tries again. “Rest your head in my lap. Close your eyes. Mission objective is to listen to my voice.”

Bucky does as he’s told, looking eerily peaceful in his compliance. Steve’s hands hesitate before they find their way into Bucky’s hair. His long fingers find the tangles and begin pulling them apart, gentle as he can.

“You know somethin’, Buck?” Steve asks, settling into his seat. “I think you’re the only person in this godforsaken world who knows me at all.”

“That’s a shame, Rogers,” Bucky answers, eyes still closed, sounding for all the world like the Bucky Barnes that Steve remembers. “Because I don’t remember you for shit.”

Steve chuckles, scratching lightly at Bucky’s head.

“Ah, I’m not worried about that, Buck. You’ll remember well and soon enough. It’ll come back. But let me tell you about the things you won’t remember, ‘cause you weren’t there. Lemme tell you about waking up in the future, because that – that’s one hell of a shared life experience.”

So Steve talks, and Bucky listens, and the sun sets and the stars come out. The porch light casts shadows long over the backyard, streaking it in light and dark. Crickets chirp. Below the earth, the fresh bodies of the old couple who owned the house begin to decay.


	4. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Rare is this love, keep it covered._   
>  _I need you to run to me, run to me, lover._   
>  _Run until you feel your lungs bleeding._

Steve had thought that Bucky might flee from touch, but that hasn’t been the case at all. The first night in their borrowed house, Steve had asked Bucky where he wanted to sleep. Bucky stared blankly, unspeaking, until at last Steve said definitively, “Sleep with me.” Bucky didn’t hesitate a second before crawling into bed. Every night, he curls up so close to Steve that Steve can hardly breathe. Every time, he wraps his unmovable metal arm tight around Steve’s torso, covering Steve’s heart with his shoulder, fingers curled possessively at Steve’s waist.

Bucky keeps a pistol under the pillow, a semi-automatic under the bed, and knives attached firmly to his ankles when he sleeps. Steve keeps the shield by the nightstand. They don’t talk about it.

Steve knows from all the nights he himself can’t sleep that Bucky rarely gets restful sleep. He starts at the smallest noises, and his grip on Steve’s middle never eases. Every now and then, Bucky manages some REM sleep, but Steve can never find it in himself to be relieved when it happens. Each time, Bucky repeats his name, rank and serial number in his sleep in a tone so familiar, so _Bucky_ , that Steve can feel his heart getting ripped up all over again.

All Steve’s dreams are nightmares too.

Tonight, Steve wakes in the middle of the night, dry-heaving from a horror dream, heart hammering wild in his chest. He’s sick with the imagery seeping vivid from his subconscious. It felt real, every minute of it. He dreamt that a postal worker came to their door, delivering flowers from Natasha. Bucky was so startled he killed the man, and then so angry he disemboweled the corpse. The thing that set Steve retching wasn’t even the horrible sight of it – it was the way he reacted, in the dream: he did nothing. He didn’t stop Bucky, didn’t say a word to condemn him.

In the thick quiet of night, with Bucky breathing soft beside him, Steve knows that’s exactly what he’d do.

Horror dreams be damned, though, Steve is happy as a clam. He wakes up every morning and Bucky is there, breathing and well, blue-gray eyes looking more and more alive each day. He can kiss Bucky’s mouth and his eyelids and listen to his heartbeat. It’s more than Steve deserves, more than he could have ever hoped for – he’ll happily endure a few awful dreams for the chance at walking through life in stride with the man he loves.

Bucky usually wakes before him, but he rarely leaves the bed without him. Bucky feels anxious without Steve’s schedule, and Steve won’t begrudge him that. Steve keeps a notepad and pen by the bed, and he schedules out Bucky’s choices for the day while Bucky cleans his guns. With the sun streaming through the window and birds chirping none the wiser, habituation makes their morning routine seem almost normal.

Steve hands Bucky the schedule. Sometimes, Bucky asks questions, which Steve counts as small victories.

“This says ‘Steve gives Bucky a haircut,’” Bucky notes.

Steve nods. “You’re startin’ to look like a lady, Buck.

Bucky frowns minutely, and Steve suppresses a smile. So, Bucky likes his long hair. Learning things about Bucky is always like this – an endless game of riddles, reading his body language, his expressions, between the lines of the few words he cares to speak.

“Just a little trim, Buck,” Steve offers, and Bucky perks up just the slightest bit. “Just to keep it manageable. Maybe we can find some hair ties around the house, too.”

Bucky nods, a faint smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “Okay.”

Sometimes it’s so good, Steve’s speechless. Sometimes it’s just him and Bucky in their tiny borrowed kitchen, and Bucky’s sitting on the counter while Steve tries not to burn their breakfast, and Steve’s so full of love, it takes everything in him not to cry.

Sometimes, Bucky pulls Steve into a huge, heavy hug, gripping tight at him, and he says words that make Steve’s heart hammer in his chest:

“You belong to me, Rogers.”

It’s so nice to belong somewhere.

Sometimes it’s so fucked up, Steve’s speechless. Steve’s laying in the grass of their borrowed backyard and Bucky’s sitting, silent, staring at the odd patch of dirt at the far corner of the lawn. They’ve got a couple of useless beers and the world is still, and Steve wonders if maybe they’re happy, and then Bucky speaks.

“I killed Howard Stark.”

He says the words like they’re bullets: unfeeling, objective, undebatable. There’s no remorse in his mouth, no regret written in his features. He says the words like he could give less a shit how they land. They land hard in Steve’s chest.

“No, Buck,” he says, jolted, shaking his head resolutely. “No you didn’t.”

They told him about Howard and Maria’s car crash shortly after he came out of the ice. Shortly after that, aliens attacked New York. There hasn’t been much time to grieve. An accident alone was hard to hear, but murder? No. Unthinkable.

“Why would I lie?” Bucky asks, and Steve has to try hard not to cringe.

“They made you,” Steve whispers, a tiny, quiet solace to himself. “They made you do it, Buck.”

Bucky snorts.

“I remembered him. They almost wiped me. I said, ‘the scientist?’ They did some tests and decided I was clear to complete the mission.”

“You remember that?” Steve asks, and there are tears betraying the anger in his eyes. It’s not anger at Bucky – never at Bucky, no – but anger at the people who did this to him. And of course, anger at himself.

“I remember every kill,” Bucky says. “Women, children. Friends.”

For a brief, absurd moment, Steve is repulsed. In this tiny, irredeemable moment, Steve feels like Bucky is trying to hurt him on purpose. His words are so… curt. Pointed. Cutting.

But no. That’s ridiculous.

“God, Buck,” he whispers, sitting up and reaching for Bucky to pull him into a hug. He wants to swallow up that awful moment of doubt with all the love that he can give. “I wish I could take that away, that pain. I would do anything to take away that pain. It must be so hard – remembering everything like that.”

Bucky kisses Steve’s neck, and whispers:

“It isn’t.”


End file.
